I know that the feeling of exhaustion, just needing a second to rest, to get away, is not foreign to the rest of humankind. I think I could venture to say that everyone arrives at this point once, twice, a thousand times in their lives. The pining for a rest, for a sabbath, is natural and normal.

We are finite. We are dust. We can’t do this alone. We want the opposite of those things to be true.

There’s a balance, which sometimes feels more like I’m on a tight-rope than a wide place.

I find that some days the things I am most acquainted with in my mundane that aren’t bad and are necessary to do I feel completely incapable of doing, frozen by my own need to escape the very things that God had prepared my hands to do that day. Some days, I am overworking and finding this pleasure and gratification in the things that my hands are doing, so much so that I neglect the fact that I still I do have need.

We’re made for both rest and work. Yet, in each of these things we can find ourselves refusing or hoarding manna, demanding something different, and doing it on our own. Rest, my way. Work, my way. Without Him.

The act of surrender, or even of receiving the daily gifts that God has given us whether in rest or work, means a laying down of ourselves.

I wanted the kind of grace that would deliver me from my circumstances. God, in his mercy, offered his sustaining grace.

Much like what Risner continues to say, I feel like when it comes to our day to day manna, we have a different idea of what is best. We have a different idea of what amount of that best should be. We want deliverance, and refuse to see the glories in sustenance.

My husband, also coming out of a season also of dryness and drought, was telling me what he thought about manna. We tend think of provision and our livelihood in terms of this magnificent looking abundance; but the manna the Israelites received daily was just enough. It can be easy to look around us, myself being a student working part time, and him restarting his business, to think we don’t have abundance. But God’s abundance is truly just enough. It’s a different abundance, and one we can trust in.

We are finite, yes, but our God is infinite. The differences between us and our God are things to take heart in. His abundance may look like our just enough, but it is everything we could ever need for today. The days I want deliverance from the inbox that just won’t quit, from kindness to others, from the work that I have been given to do and the roles that I play; he gives manna. Tasting dry and dusty, only a little sweet, I look up and ask “what is this?”

Just enough, daughter. Just enough.

Land in a place of work or rest that finds yourself accepting the manna He gives, family. It’s abundance in a land of weariness.